


Act Your Age

by threegee



Category: Peter Pan - J. M. Barrie
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-03-17
Updated: 2013-03-17
Packaged: 2017-12-05 14:31:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 477
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/724357
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/threegee/pseuds/threegee
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Neverland is like one long school holiday, but it’s not as fun if there isn’t any school to be bored with first."</p><p>Not everyone is cut out for eternal Glorious Adventure.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Act Your Age

**Author's Note:**

> Originally written to be performed as a monologue for a high school English class roughly 300 years ago.
> 
> Characters belong to the ghost of J.M. Barrie. His book was better than the Disney movie.

Even flying isn’t very much fun anymore.  I suppose I’m not thinking enough happy thoughts, but I haven’t many left to think.   This place is _nothing_ like I imagined.  Which is sort of funny, I suppose, since Neverland runs on imagination – it’s the coin of the realm here.  We have no other money except the pirates’ gold, and that always gets stolen by Peter anyway and isn’t real besides.  I’m not supposed to point that out, though.  

I’m also not supposed to point out that Michael is too big for his cradle or that giant mushrooms don’t make good shelter from the rain.  Come to think of it, there are a lot of things I’m not supposed to point out.  There are too many rules in this place, because we have to Pretend exactly right or it will all fall apart.  There are more rules here than at home; they’re just different ones.  Instead of listening to Father and Mother I have to obey Peter and I have to Pretend all the time.  I hate Pretending.  I’m rubbish at it.  I hate Pretending that eating only sweets doesn’t make me sick; that I don’t mind when the pirates knock off my spectacles in a fight and everyone laughs; that Peter is actually as good at fighting as he says (since Hook would’ve had him last time if not for Tiger Lily), but mostly I hate Pretending that I don’t want to go home.

I liked it at home!  London is lovely and I don’t understand why all the Lost Boys hated it so.  I liked Buckhingham Palace, and tea with biscuits, and walking Nana in the rain, and – and even proper bedtime!  Neverland is like one long school holiday, but it’s not as fun if there isn’t any school to be bored with first.  And somehow whenever we Pretend pirates and Indians, I always have to be the one who walks the plank or gets sacrificed to the smoke gods, and I don’t want to play anymore.  I want to go home – _I want to go home!_    

I want to go home, but my siblings won’t listen.  Everyone ignores me.  Michael barely even remembers Father and Mother, and Wendy is too busy fancying Peter to talk to me.  I tried pointing out that at home Peter could court her properly and be her dance partner at parties, but she just sniffed at me and went off to yell at Tinkerbell.  I don’t see what’s really so bad about growing up, anyhow.  If we were home, when I turned twelve I would start learning Latin at the Upper School and after University I could do Banking like Father.   Father and Mother laughed at me when I asked for a set of encyclopaedias last Christmas and called me “nine-going-on-thirty”, but Hook is “fifty-going-on-seven” and somehow I think that’s worse.


End file.
